Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
The Upside of Peer Pressure & The New York Five

the college computer lab is such a weird thing, in terms of an environment and social phenomenon. I am in bi hall right now in one of the few computer labs on campus designed as such. Other spaces were constructed in 19th Century buildings that had big open spaces and now have desks, wires, and lots of impersonal office furniture. I love coming to this lab especially (good light and big computer screens) on Sunday nights when every desk is occupied and there is the evident behavior of learning in action. Most people do goof off, write some emails, chat with their neighbor, but really, I am one of 40 kids doing something very productive right now. Want to talk about the good side of impressionable youths and peer pressure? then just come to the caffeinated-unblinking computer lab on a Sunday night - here it's hard to resist being a scholar, or at least scholarly, even if the engagement with work is brief. (I could however do without the lovebird smootching next to me, it's not adding to my argument about this being an independent place) But I guess I should keep one of my favorite of Jenny Holzer's truisms in mind, everyone's work is equally as important, even if it is of a sexual nature. One thing that has lead to much amusement, the stapler has been out of staples as long as I have been here, but at least 600 people have had to learn the lesson the hard way, snicker snicker. I guess everyone needs a stapler these days.

It is my intention to actually work on my thesis tonight even though I spent the afternoon preparing an architecture presentation and writing an email to the down-trodden Nathan who is stranded miserably for another 10 weeks in Paris.

The architecture has been engaging. I just read "Five Architects" an exhibition catalogue from a 1970s MoMA show about the so-called "New York School" of figures like Meier, Gwathmey, Graves, Hejduk, and Eisenman. It's complicated stuff though, I hope my presentation can clearly articulate the similarities of these five. It's hard when a movement begins because critics arbitrarily group people who might arguably be doing similar things, although they might not have any formal ties and no personal relationships. Some movements exist naturally, like Picasso and Braque and their commual cubist experiments. That's much more natural and easier to swallow than Colin Rowe grouping these five - although formally they all use a similar language and create houses that are all basically variations on the following theme. White planar architecture, floating voids, rotated plans that both affirm and deny a traditional grid. But it's very sophisticated, it's an architecture of layers and the connections between the five is much harder to explain after you accept the simple fact that their aesthetic is based on Le Corbusier, and really, who's isn't, in some respect??

posted by lmjasinski at 8:53 PM